By Peter Collier, Nick Del Calzo
320 pages; Artisan

I'm on the board of the Medal of Honor foundation. There are 90 people living who have the medal, the highest award given by our country. We lost one of them this May—his name was John Finn. He was 100 years old, and he stood in an open field in Hawaii and fired at planes for two hours on Sunday morning, December 7, 1941. He was hit 21 times. If you read one story per day, you'll never have a bad day. They speak to what we're all capable of.

— Brian Williams